It was until after I watched Jia Zhengke's A Touch of Sin, which original name in Chinese meant “predestined”, that I realized why he gave the film such a fatalistic name.

This is a film depicting four incidents that happened in China, the occurrence of each of them caused a serious rift in the country. And it should be noted that these four incidents took place between 2001 and 2010, a decade that was most crucial in determining the sociopolitical direction of China. In this ten years, the social distribution pattern became stagnant; the relationship between the people and the government changed from mutual trust to mutual distrust.

At the moment, Russia stations 100,000 troops at Northern, Southern and Eastern borders of Ukraine to intimidate that country. With the achievement of getting Crimea to join the Russian Federation, Putin is already seen by the Russian people as the hero who brings their country back onto the world stage, regardless of whether he takes further actions against Ukraine. And regardless of whether the international community would welcome Russia's return to the world stage, Putinism—which practices authoritarian rule at home and power politics abroad—has already taken shape.

Translated by Fenny Li and Tan Hohua. Written in English by Gisela Sommer.
This translation was first published in the Epoch Times.

Every year, the highlight of the “two sessions” is the “government
work report.” This year, however, it was somewhat different. After the
report was released, it was a bit unconvincing to break out into a mood
of optimism and celebration.
With no other choices, Xinhua News Agency published an interview with
the director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission Xu
Shaoshi, titled: “Rebutting the New Round of Gloomy Economic
Predictions, China’s Economy Now Undergoes Steady Development.”
The article served to announce to the world that the Chinese economy
is now completely dependent on the world’s confidence in China. If
confidence is high, China’s economy will turn out to be good. If the
gloomy outlook prevails, China’s economy will steer toward recession.
In fact, whether China’s economy will be good or bad depends entirely
on the fundamental factors of China’s economy itself. Currently,
China’s economic outlook is not optimistic, be it the real economy or
the fictitious economy, i.e. the financial systems. That is why, when
the work report tries to cover every aspect of the economy, problems
will pop up everywhere, just as in the old Chinese saying: it’s like
“trying to press down fleas with one’s ten fingers.”